Crisis over Cuba relived from teen view

Saturday

Oct 27, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 27, 2012 at 12:08 PM

Two recent phone conversations with high-school friends living in New Jersey evoked plenty of memories. The topic, after all, was planning a 50th class reunion. The more we talked about what we were doing during our senior year a half-century ago, though, the more the discussion centered not on high-school frivolity but on a world ready to explode.

Two recent phone conversations with high-school friends living in New Jersey evoked plenty of memories.

The topic, after all, was planning a 50th class reunion.

The more we talked about what we were doing during our senior year a half-century ago, though, the more the discussion centered not on high-school frivolity but on a world ready to explode.

No natural disaster threatened our teenage existence — just something eventually known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

For geographically challenged urban youths who knew nothing about ICBMs and Caribbean islands, two weeks in October 1962 yielded quite an education.

At age 17, with autumn breaking out all over, you lack the ability to focus on anything but the fun and joy that mark the high-school experience.

My neighborhood in western Philadelphia didn’t have the lush gardens and foliage of nearby storied places such as Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore.

Just four blocks away, though, we had the studios of WFIL, the home of American Bandstand. The long-running musical show featured teenagers dancing to Top 40 songs introduced by host Dick Clark.

Many of my classmates would cut afternoon classes, mingle with Clark and dance to Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard To Do or Gene Chandler’s Duke of Earl.

West Philly was Bandstand, and Bandstand was the mecca of teen-dom.

Yet that October, with ominous developments demanding our attention, Bandstand suddenly became much less important.

A highflying U-2 reconnaissance plane taking photos over Cuba had recorded unmistakable evidence that intercontinental ballistic missiles were being assembled at bases built by the Soviet Union.

Although we’d heard about Cuba the year before with the Bay of Pigs invasion, we knew the island mostly as the home of Lucy’s husband, Ricky Ricardo.

Teenagers in west Philadelphia and elsewhere weren’t plugged in to world events, but signs suggested that big trouble was brewing.

While eating breakfast on Oct. 20, 1962 — a Saturday, so I wasn’t in school — I learned what trouble sounded like in the form of high-pitched jet engines.

Looking out the kitchen window, I saw B-47 bombers landing at the nearby Philadelphia International Airport. Naturally curious, I left home and crossed the four-lane highway to see what was going on.

Many of the sleek six-engine silver bombers were parked at a remote part of the airport, with armed sentries already guarding them.

Where did these weapons of war come from, and why were they in my neighborhood, at a civilian airport?

The answer would come two days later.

In a televised address to the nation, President John F. Kennedy informed us that our country was threatened by the insertion of offensive missiles in Cuba, that he had placed our armed forces on alert and that the United States would take action if the missiles weren’t removed.

Moreover, Air Force units had been dispersed to civilian airports — which explained why I saw bombers landing from my window.

There was no talk of Bandstand at school the next day — only of the fear of war (and of incineration in a nuclear blast).

For the next two weeks, 2,000 teenagers were uncharacteristically subdued. The “duck and cover” film and exercises we had practiced in the first grade were wistfully recalled.

We all grew up rather quickly.

At his reunion in April, Denis D. Smith, 67, of Westerville will share with his classmates something he recently learned: The B-47 bombers came from Lockbourne Air Force Base near Columbus, where he moved 25 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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